Harry Potter and the Hidden Truth
by BlondiezHere
Summary: Harry falls into a brief sleep following his final battle with Voldemort, and in his dreams comes to a shocking conclusion about how very closely they are related.


**Harry Potter and the Hidden Truth**

By Christina Moore

After eating the sandwich Kreacher had brought him, Harry lay back on the comfortable four-poster and drifted into sleep that was not a result of physical exhaustion, but exhaustion of the mental sort. This last year had been more trying than any other in his entire life, and it's culmination - the events of today, in which the prophecy about himself and Voldemort had finally come to pass - had simply left him drained. He hadn't even realized how truly tired he was until he had set the plate on the side table and lain back, falling asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow.

He dreamed, naturally, of the fight - the last big showdown between a boy wizard and perhaps the most evil wizard that had ever lived. He dreamed of events that came before it (Molly Weasley battling Bellatrix Lestrange was something he wished he could have captured on film), and events that came after (seeing good friends such as Lupin, Tonks, and Fred Weasley dead on the floor). He dreamed of his mother, his father, Dumbledore, and even Ignotus Peverell, his ancestor.

It was as he dreamed of the youngest Peverell brother - the one who had passed the Cloak of Invisibility down though his family to rest at last in the hands of Harry himself - that a startling realization came to him. The more he thought about it, the more he realized that he and Voldemort were not just David and Goliath, but Cain and Abel as well.

Sort of.

"Sort of what, mate?"

Harry's eyes snapped open - he hadn't realized he was talking in his sleep, nor that Ron, Hermione, and Ginny had come into the room. He sat up and reached for his glasses and the former two took a seat on the edge of Ron's old four-poster while Ginny came and sat beside him on the edge of his. He smiled at her as she took his hand in both of hers and leaned over to kiss his cheek. He was not remiss to the roll of her brother's eyes, nor the lovey-dovey look Ron shot at Hermione in the next instant, at which he rolled his own eyes.

"So, sort of what? You were, um, kind of mumbling in your sleep there," Ron said then.

Harry glanced at the Cloak, which he had laid across the foot of his bed. "I don't know exactly why, but I started dreaming about Ignotus Peverell, and I suddenly thought of Marvolo Gaunt."

Ginny frowned. "Isn't that Tom Riddle's grandfather?" she asked.

He nodded. "Yes, and I know it's a bit mental for me to be dreaming about him, but hear me out. When Professor Dumbledore and I were tramping through memories two years ago, one of them featured Marvolo Gaunt, and he was wearing the horcrux ring, the one with the stone that Cadmus Peverell had asked for from Death, according to the fable."

Hermione nodded her head. "Yes, the Resurrection Stone," she murmured.

"In that memory, Gaunt was claiming that the ring had been passed down through his family, that it was proof of the Gaunts' relationship to Salazar Slytherin," Harry went on. "If the stone in that ring truly was the stone Cadmus received from Death - "

"Which we know it was, dirty great bugger," Ron muttered.

" - then it means I really am an 'heir of Slytherin,' and not just because Voldemort passed some of his abilities onto me when he tried to kill me when I was a baby."

Ron frowned, and looked between Harry, Hermione, and his sister, and then back again. "I don't get it. How does that make you an heir of Slytherin?" he asked.

"I think I know what he means," Ginny said, giving his hand a squeeze as she looked at boy next to her. "If the ring was passed down through the family and not stolen from the Peverell brother to whom it belonged, and the Peverells were the Gaunts' connection to Slytherin, then that would mean Harry is related to Slytherin as well, as he's descended from Ignotus, the youngest of the three brothers."

Hermione appeared to be in deep thought as he nodded at Ginny's explanation. "Wait a minute," she said suddenly. "No offense, Harry, but your hypothesis is not entirely accurate."

Harry blinked. "What do you mean?"

Hermione blushed. "Well, it is if the Peverells were descendants of Slytherin themselves," she said, "but even though Marvolo Gaunt claimed the ring was proof of his relation to both families, it doesn't necessarily _mean_ they were."

Ron looked at her with a clearly puzzled expression. "You've lost me, love."

Ginny chuckled and the two girls shared a look. Hermione grinned and said, "What I mean is that going by Gaunt's claim that the ring was inherited, it is proof of nothing more than the fact that one of Cadmus Peverell's descendents married one of Salazar Slytherin's, and that it was through _that_ union that the ring Voldemort later made into a horcrux came to be owned by the Gaunt family. You'd be related to the Slytherin bloodline by marriage several times removed, Harry, but that's all."

"Aye," Harry said after a moment, "that may well be true. But the _Tale of the Three Brothers_ said Cadmus killed himself when he realized that the stone had limitations, and he couldn't really be with the woman he had brought back from the dead. If he killed himself to be with her in death, how did he ever have any descendents?"

This appeared to stump even the brightest witch of their age, for Hermione's brow drew together in consternation as she mulled Harry's words over. After a long moment, she finally shrugged and said, "Well, he must have had some, possibly before he ever met Death and got the stone. But even having probably married and had children with another woman, Cadmus never forgot his first love, who had died before he could ask her to marry him."

Ginny gave his hand another gentle squeeze. "What's the matter, Harry? Are you worried you really are related to Voldemort? Would it truly matter if you were? You'd only be a very distant cousin if you are, you know."

He looked at her. "Not worried about it so much as just wondering is all. And no, I suppose it wouldn't matter overmuch. I'm my own person, and my family's past doesn't dictate my future as long as I don't let it."

"Precisely," she said, and beamed a smile at him that melted his heart. "Besides, you could always look at it another way."

"And what way is that?"

"Even if the Peverells were descendants of Slytherin, you're living proof that not all members of that bloodline are nefarious evildoers plotting global domination. After all, Ignotus was a good man and you come from him, not one of his greedy brothers - who are more like Slytherin and Voldemort than you could ever be."

Harry looked into her earnest, beautiful face, and at last he nodded. He then leaned forward and placed a light kiss on her brow, then stood to his feet.

"Come on, mates. There's a party going on and we're missing it."


End file.
